I don’t buy the theory. If you lose your vision, like the boy in the story then I’d expect that you’d eventually stop dreaming. It doesn’t make sense that other senses would start then fighting for protection of their neural circuitry. Why didn’t they earlier then?
What feels more likely to me is that your brain is trying to optimize something in it, which is why it is correlated with plasticity. The brain has evolved to turn off most of the body (since there’s probably strong selection against moving limbs while sleeping), but little selection against moving eyes while closed. REM is just what is left of our bodies movements.
What feels more likely to me is that your brain is trying to optimize something in it, which is why it is correlated with plasticity. The brain has evolved to turn off most of the body (since there’s probably strong selection against moving limbs while sleeping), but little selection against moving eyes while closed. REM is just what is left of our bodies movements.